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Who's Who in ‘Homeric’ Society?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. G. Geddes
A. G. Geddes
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide
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Extract

Question and quotation marks tend to proliferate in articles which ask whether Homer can provide any historical information about early Greek society. In this article ‘Homeric’ society will refer to the society which is portrayed in the Iliad and the Odyssey. ‘The World of Odysseus’ will refer to the recension of ‘Homeric’ society which appears in M. I. Finley's book of that name. Finley claims that ‘The World of Odysseus’ is a faithful account of ‘Homeric’ society and that the latter is a literary portrait of a real society that existed in Greece some time during the dark ages. As a result of Finley's influential book, ‘The World of Odysseus’, or something very like it, has found its way into most of the history books generally available in the classroom. In this article I wish to reconsider ‘Homeric’ society and to question the propriety of identifying it with either ‘The World of Odysseus’ or any real society.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , May 1984 , pp. 17 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1984

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References

1 Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus (first publ. 1954; 2nd ed., Harmondsworth, 1979)Google Scholar.

2 For example Andrewes, A., Greek Society (Harmondsworth, 1975), 45–7Google Scholar; Arnheim, M. T. W., Aristocracy in Greek Society (London, 1977), 13–23Google Scholar; Arnott, P., Introduction to the Greek World (London, 1972), 99–103Google Scholar; Cook, R. M., The Greeks till Alexander (London, 1961), 25–6Google Scholar; Finley, M. I., Early Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages (London, 1970), 84–7Google Scholar; Green, P., A Concise History of Ancient Greece (London, 1973), 48, 57Google Scholar; Murray, O., Early Greece (London, 1980), 38–68Google Scholar; Starr, C. G., The Origins of Greek Civilization (London, 1962), 123–33Google Scholar.

3 Leaf, Walter, Homer and History (London, 1915), 243Google Scholar; ‘…I am not afraid of the conclusion, however humorously put, that “Menelaos was a well-known infantry officer with auburn whiskers”’ (p. 323).

4 op. cit. 54.

5 Nilsson, Martin, Homer and Mycenae (London, 1933Google Scholar; repr. New York, 1968), 214.

6 op. cit. 244–5.

7 Historia 6 (1957), 133–59Google Scholar, reproduced in Language and Background of Homer, ed. Kirk, G. S. (Cambridge, 1964), 191–217Google Scholar.

8 op. cit. 217.

9 Finley, , The World of Odysseus, 49Google Scholar.

10 Finley thinks ‘The World of Odysseus’ belongs to the tenth and ninth centuries and defends his position in Proceedings of the Classical Association 71 (1974), 13–31Google Scholar. Others (e.g. Murray, O., Early Greece, 298Google Scholar) agree with his description of ‘Homeric’ society but assign it to the eighth century.

11 Finley, , The World of Odysseus, 153Google Scholar.

12 op. cit. 53. Cf. Finley, , Early Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages, 84Google Scholar: ‘The world of Agamemnon and Achilles and Odysseus was one of petty kings and nobles, who possessed the best lands and considerable flocks, and lived a seignonal existence, in which raids and local wars were frequent’.

13 The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford, 1970), 6Google Scholar.

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17 Snodgrass, , ‘An Historical Homeric Society?’, JHS 94 (1974), 114 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Long, A. A., ‘Morals and Values in Homer’, JHS 90 (1970), 137 n. 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘…a consistent pattern of society does not emerge from Homer’.

18 Calhoun, G. M., ‘Classes and Masses in Homer’, Classical Philology 29 (1934), 192 ff. and 301 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 In A Companion to Homer, ed. Wace, A. J. B. and Stubbings, F. H. (London, 1962), 438Google Scholar, the editors even include a footnote in the chapter contributed by Calhoun, disassociating themselves from his views.

20 Opinions differ about the quantity and extent of the genealogies which are to be expected in an epic poem. Finley, refers to ‘endless recitation of genealogies’ in The World of Odysseus, 59Google Scholar, ‘innumerable genealogies’ in ‘Homer and Mycenae: Property and Tenure’, Historia 6 (1957), 147Google Scholar. Jeanmaire, H. on the other hand in Couroi et Courétès (Travaux et Mémoires de l' Université de Lille, no. 21, 1939), 51Google Scholar, says ‘…les questions de naissance et de généalogie n'ont pas dans les poèmes l'importance qu’ on s'attendrait à leur voir prendre dans une société à hiérarchie nobiliaire strictement déterminée’.

21 Calhoun, , op. cit. 195, 208Google Scholar.

22 Jeanmaire, , op. cit. 43–58Google Scholar.

23 Kirk, G. S., ‘War and the Warrior in the Homeric Poems’, Problèmes de la guerre en Gréce ancienne, ed. Vernant, J.-P. (Paris and the Hague, 1968), 112Google Scholar. Kirk says that the army at Troy can be seen as a band of young noblemen or a large army of mixed rank from kings to servants. ‘Our Iliad combines elements of both conceptions (and, no doubt, of others) to form a picture which is vivid and dramatic but, in both tactical and sociological terms, quite unrealistic’ Op. cit. 113.

24 Jeanmaire, , op. cit. 50Google Scholar, gives the following translation of Il. 12. 211–15. ‘Hector, dit Polydamas, tu me rabroues quand je donne publiquement de bons conseils. Bien sûr nul n'admettra qu'un vilain (dèmou eonta) ose élever la voix dans le conseil ou dans le rang, au lieu de ne songer qu'à te seconder. Mais moi, (qui ne suis pas le premier venu) j'ai à te dire, frère, ce que bon me semble.’ The question is whether οὐδ μν οὐδ introduces Hector's thought about Polydamas or is a shared reflection about the behaviour of the lower classes. But πε is not ‘bien sûr’ and the bracketed gloss that Jeanmaire needs to make Polydamas’ words yield his sense are not justified in the text.

25 English translations of Homer on the other hand have a wealth of words. e.g. the folk, peasants, commoners, serfs, the masses, multitude, lower orders, lower classes etc.

26 Kirk, , op. cit. 112Google Scholar.

27 Pace Finley, , The World of Odysseus, 60Google Scholar ‘…of the half dozen or so craftsmen who are dignified with a personal name in the poem, not one has a patronymic, let alone a genealogy’,.

28 Peruogetes…

το γνετ' κ πατρς πολ χερονος υἱς μενων

παντοας ρετς, ἠμν πδας ἠδ μχεσθαι,

κα νον ν πρώτοισι Μυκηναων ττυκτο. (Il. 15. 641–3).

29 ‘Θερστης: apparently from an Aiolic form of Θρσος’ The Iliad of Homer ed. Leaf, W. and Bayfield, M. A. (London, 1962), 306Google Scholar.

30 Erbse, H., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem i (Berlin, 1962), 228Google Scholar. I owe this observation to my colleague Mr Martin Holt of the University of Adelaide.

31 Adkins, A. W. H., Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), 36Google Scholar; Arnheim, M. T. W., Aristocracy in Greek Society (London, 1977), 16Google Scholar.

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33 Glotz, G., The Greek City and its Institutions (London and New York, 1929), 36Google Scholar.

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36 Finley, , op. cit. 55Google Scholar.

37 Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice (London, 1813), 1–2Google Scholar.

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39 The following quotation illustrates to what divergent conclusions reading Homer may lead: ‘In Homer the king was at once the chief priest, the chief judge, and the supreme war-lord of his people’ (Bury, J. B. and Meiggs, Russell, A History of Greece [London, 1975], 52)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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41 Sceptres are mentioned in the literature of the ancient near east and frequently represented in art. See Ancient Near East Texts relating to the Old Testament, ed. Pritchard, J. B. (Princeton, 1969)Google Scholar, and The Ancient Near East in Pictures relating to the Old Testament, passim. Also ‘…when Shamash…had placed in my hand the sceptre which rules the peoples…’ Luckenbill, D. D., Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia I (Chicago, 1926), 141–2Google Scholar.

43 The young prince (if that is what he is) on the ‘Warrior Vase’ found in the villa of Hagia Triada and now in the Archaeological Museum at Heraklion seems to be holding a sceptre, but there is no way of telling what it symbolizes.

44 Thucydides 6. 83. 1.

45 See the note on these lines in W. Leaf and M. A. Bayfleld II (London, 1962), 490–1, 494.

46 Egyptians had long believed that their king brought fertility to the land (v. Pritchard, J. B., Ancient Near East Texts relating to the Old Testament, 31–2)Google Scholar. Assyrians shared the belief (v. Luckenbill, , op. cit. II, 60–3 and 292Google Scholar: ‘After Assur…had caused me to take my seat, joyfully, upon the throne of the father who begot me, Adad sent his rains, Ea opened his fountains, the grain grew 5 cubits tall in the stalk…’).

47 Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus (Harmondsworth, 1979), 84Google Scholar.

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49 e.g. Rose, Peter, ‘Class Ambivalence in the Odyssey, Historia 24 (1975), 129–49Google Scholar, where the suitors are called oligarchs (although the word oligarchy belongs to the political debates of the fifth century: Herodotus 3. 80–2) and are opposed to the king, who appears as the champion of the common people. In ‘The Odyssey as an Anti-aristocratic Statement’, by Farron, S. G. in Antiquity I, 1 (1979–1980), 95Google Scholar, the king is again the forerunner of the Greek tyrant in opposition to the local aristocrats, although Odysseus is fighting in order to repossess his own private property, he is supported only by members of his household and the families of the suitors seem to be at least half the population of Ithaca.

50 Plutarch, , Pericles 11Google Scholar.

51 ‘An undertone of popular comment pervades the Homeric poems…’ SirJebb, Richard, Essays and Addresses (Cambridge, 1907), 130Google Scholar.

52 Gernet, Louis, ‘Droit et prédroit en Grèce ancienne’, Anthropologie de la Grèce antique, 175 ff.Google Scholar, describes some of the beliefs and rituals which preceded the rule of law in Greece.

53 Gernet, , op. cit. 243Google Scholar.

54 The Administration of Justice from Homer to Aristotle (Chicago, 1930), 22Google Scholar. Nilsson, , Homer and Mycenae, 223Google Scholar: ‘Nor was the administering of justice any essential part of the king's power’.

55 cf. Nilsson, , op. cit. 222–3Google Scholar. Nilsson mentions the leadership of Dionysios of Phocaea, who was elected commander-in-chief of the Ionian fleet some time before the battle of Lade, but says that ‘Agamemnon’s power was evidently much more securely founded’ (p. 223).

56 Greenhalgh, P. A. L., Early Greek Warfare (Cambridge, 1973), 2, 170Google Scholar, would call this a piece of ‘archaizing veneer’.